Seib & Wessel: What We’re Reading Friday

Another Budget Deal Bites the Dust

Associated Press

The small group of Republican senators who had been meeting with the White House on budget matters called it quits on Thursday. They were known as the “Dinner Caucus.” In the end, they got less accomplished than the “Breakfast Club.”

Their fate, though, was predictable. The goal they were pursuing – a big, blockbuster, bipartisan, budget deal – had been the goal of many in the past three years, all with similar results. No agreement on taxes. No agreement on spending cuts. Same song, different band.

Let’s review the obituaries of other efforts to forge a budget deal:

1.) Simpson/Bowles: Formed in 2010, this group shocked many by putting together a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan that combined tax increases and spending cuts. Liberal Democrats said they would support entitlement changes to Medicare and Social Security and conservative Republicans said they would accept tax increases. The proposal was written by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, and had broad corporate support.

What happened: The group received more support than expected in December 2010, but not enough to secure a vote in Congress. The White House gave it a lukewarm reception, and House Republicans showed little interest. It would seemingly have nine lives, coming back again and again, but it never won support from political leaders. Here’s a look at other failed efforts seeking s budget deal.

–Damian Paletta

Recommended reading from around the Web:

Bloomberg News

Sen. Bob Corker

Budget talks between the White House and a band of Senate Republicans, about the only across-the-aisle efforts to head off a budget showdown this fall, have stalled, our colleague Janet Hook reports. “No reason to continue these talks at present,” Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) said. [WSJ]

John Makin (@makineconomics) of AEI and hedge fund Caxton Associates says the Fed has been too complacent about creating bubbles in financial and housing markets in the past, and the new chairman needs a “bubble watch” team to avoid a repeat of the recent wealth-destroying bursting of the housing bubble. [AEI]

Prakash Loungani profiles Stanley Fischer, most recently Israel’s central banker, and traces his influence on everything from Ben Bernanke (whose thesis he supervised at MIT) to the IMFs handling of the Asian financial crisis. [IMF]

President Barack Obama, who entered office as a cautious leader decrying go-it-alone American unilateralism in world affairs, now may have to abandon caution and go it alone in striking Syria after the British Parliament’s stunning refusal to back action there. [Politico]

William Kristol says President Obama has no choice but to move now against Syria, arguing that “it would be disastrous for an American president to back off from the just and necessary use of military force when he has threatened it and prepared for it.” [Weekly Standard]

Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) argues that bombing Syria to save hundreds of thousands of lives would be justified even if it violates international law, which requires either UN approval or action in self-defense. Violating international law to send a symbolic message that using chemical weapons violates international law? That’s not justified, he says. [Bloomberg]

Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) recommends ignoring whatever Russia says or does on Syria, arguing that its interests in either the country or President Bashar al-Assad are minimal and that its bluster against American intervention and movement of its warships to the vicinity are mostly designed to score cheap propaganda points. [New Republic]

American politics is not just worse than it looks, write think tankers Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein, who published a high-profile book a year ago on that theme that lambasted Republicans. “It’s even worse than we thought.” [Washington Post]

President Obama and the First Lady are stepping up their public and behind-the-scenes efforts to promote the Affordable Care Act as the Oct. 1 start of the first of the law’s health exchanges approaches. The White House is approaching the six-month enrollment period as if it’s a get-out-the-vote political campaign. [Politico]

Sign of the Times

Minor milestones we’ve spotted

As Labor Day weekend arrives, 54% of Americans approve of labor unions, a slight increase from 52% in 2012 and six percentage points above the all-time low reached in 2009; 39% disapprove of unions. [Gallup]

Japan is reporting the biggest inflation rate in five years. Prices, excluding fresh food, rose 0.7% over the past 12 months. [WSJ]

Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking a 3% increase in next year’s budget allocation, the biggest rise in 22 years. [Reuters]

About 43% of U.S. households won’t pay any federal income tax this year; about two-thirds of them are paying payroll taxes. [Tax Policy Center]

In 2012, one of every six of the world’s international students came from China, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. [WSJ]

Eliot Spitzer is now tied with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, 46%-46%, in New York City’s race for comptroller among likely Democratic primary voters. Spitzer led 56%-37% in mid-August. [Quinnipiac]

More than half (55%) the Americans who had been out of work for 27 weeks or more in June and were still looking for work were single and childless, according to the Urban Institute. [MarketWatch]

Seventy-four percent of people surveyed say their 401(k) has recovered from the financial crisis about as fast, or faster, than expected. And 52% say information about their 401(k) investments is more confusing than information on health-care benefits. [Charles Schwab | Graphic]

The Boston Marathon will accept an extra 9,000 runners for next year’s race, the second largest its 118-year history at 36,000 runners. [AP]

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